According to a big new story from New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti, David Petraeus signed a classified directive — the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order — last September approving the deployment of small special operations teams to go into friendly (Saudi Arabia and Yemen) and unfriendly (Iran and Somalia) countries to collect intelligence.

The Lieberman sham compromise on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell cedes control of the military from the law-making and law-executing branches of government to the United States military. In effect, this law says open service is legal, but only when the military pleases.

People seem to be unhappy about the government’s, shall we say, cooperation with BP.

Combining the free market and the Second Amendment explosively.

Jimmy Driftwood sings The Battle of New Orleans. What’s on your mind tonight?

BP supplies the Vampire Squid with ink.

Both Marcy Wheeler and Kirk Murphy have responded to BP’s filing with EPA (pdf) in which BP insists that they must continue the use Corexit EC9500A as the dispersant of choice in attempting to mitigate the effects of the continuing gusher a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. I want to expand on their findings to point out the intellectual dishonesty BP uses in supporting their decision to continue using Corexit.

One of Wall Street’s finest slipped and told the New York Times that the financial reform bill wouldn’t affect their core business to any major degree.

Patent Absurdity takes a look at software patents, and makes what may seem to some to be radical points: That patenting software hurts innovation and harms inventors and consumers

Can you patent the undeniable fact that 2+2=4? That is a law of nature. What about scheduling meetings–can that be patented? In May 2009, Slashdot.com reported that IBM had applied for a patent on a meeting plan that would make participants more focused:

Today, BP claims it must keep hiding dispersing its oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico with its subsidiary’s product, Corexit, because the alternative dispersants could be endocrine disruptors. One nasty form of endocrine disruptor is called PAH. In the real world, we’ve known since 2004 that the very same Corexit that BP has been [...]